Dissonant memories of Japanese American incarceration

ABSTRACT

Memories of the Japanese American Incarceration Camps during WWII vary widely across America. For some, memories of the incarceration are a focal point of their identity and a driver of political action. Others who underwent this imprisonment choose not to recall their experiences. Incarceration can haunt their descendants as an ever-present but silenced past. Broadly, the United States’ relationship to this past is fractured. Activists invoke the incarceration as an affront to American values. As recently as 2017, politicians recall it as precedent for immigration bans and proposed legislation for the incarceration of minority groups. For many, it is not remembered at all, left out of the master narrative of American history. In this article, I discuss the dissonant memorialisations associated with seven detention facilities, key components to the infrastructure of mass removal and incarceration. Archaeology must actively engage with such uneven terrains of memory.

KEYWORDS:

• Japanese American incarceration
• WWII
• memorial
• dissonant heritage
• negative heritage
• detention facility

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Koji Lau-Ozawa

Koji Lau-Ozawa is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. His research focuses on the archaeology of the Gila River Japanese American Incarceration Camp, and on Japanese migration. He received his MA (Hons) form the University of Edinburgh in Archaeology and Social Anthropology and an MA in Anthropology from San Francisco State University. He has worked in archaeology in Northern California for Stanford Heritage Services and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area since 2009.